What Melania Trump Can Learn From Barbara Bush

From 1989 to 1993, Barbara Bush made the second hardest job in America look easy. This achievement was particularly impressive considering she was sandwiched between two lighting-rod-like first ladies. Barbara Bush could see what Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton could not: the unwritten rules governing this extraconstitutional position. Gossamer shackles restrain the woman standing on what Nancy Reagan called the “white glove pulpit”—a recognition of the political delicacy the modern job of first lady requires.

It’s a dangerous delusion to think otherwise, as Reagan and Clinton found out the hard way—and Melania Trump may well learn in time. First ladies juggle the traditional assumptions buried within the old-fashioned title with modern pressures on prominent women to lead. Clinton famously said of her decision to pursue a career while her husband was governor of Arkansas, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,” setting off a wave of condemnation for seeming to denigrate women who chose to be homemakers, while Laura Bush faced constant sniggers for being exactly that. Beyond all the mixed messaging around women’s roles, the reality is that first ladies, like all unelected advisers surrounding the president, must beware the invisible tripwires surrounding the most powerful man in the world.

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In fact, two very different women – Reagan and Clinton – endured similar slurs because they set off this lingering American sexism along with perennial American fears of manipulative Rasputins. Nancy Reagan always protected her “Ronnie.” Policy or politics rarely interested her; the president did—so she monitored her husband’s poll ratings and historical reputation. “If Ronnie were a shoe salesman,” she explained, “I’d be out selling shoes.” Her solicitousness stirred attacks on her as a power-mad Lady Macbeth, especially when she deposed Reagan’s second chief of staff, Donald Regan.

Hillary Clinton cared intensely about policy and politics – sometimes to the detriment of her husband’s standing. Yet she, too, was caricatured as Lady Macbeth—and worse, especially when her health care reform plan tanked. “Shrillary” was called a “feminazi” trying to bring on “Big Sister”; she was at once “frigid,” the lover of the late White House staffer Vince Foster, and a lesbian. The overlapping, sexist attacks suggest she violated the same protocols that Nancy Reagan did.

Barbara Bush was more cautious. In 1992, she called herself “half Eleanor, half Bess,” explaining: “I go out and do a lot of things. I do lots of traveling and a lot of programs ... I really stay out of government business if I possibly can.” Eleanor Roosevelt epitomized the activist, even defiant first lady. Bess Truman embodied the traditional presidential spouse. In the 1950s, Mrs. Truman preferred staying back home in Independence, Missouri, avoiding what her husband called “The Great White Jail.”

More than the nouveau riche Nancy Reagan or the Baby Boomer Hillary Clinton, Barbara Pierce Bush was born into America’s aristocratic world of unspoken but clear-cut red and green lights. A formidable woman with a sharp tongue that occasionally released deep frustrations, she was raised to hide her emotions, read the hidden social signals and do whatever society expected her to do. When George H.W. Bush ran for Harris County chairman in Texas in 1962, “Bar” trekked with him to 210 precincts. Bored, she needlepointed away as her husband spoke—a deliciously passive-aggressive move that managed to ignore him while serving up a politically potent domestic image.

Barbara Bush survived by protecting herself—and playing the woman card when desperate. One photographer in the 1964 campaign looked at her and said: “Would the lady in the red dress please get out of the photo?” This story elicited so much sympathy with millions of women eclipsed by their husbands that on the campaign trail in 1988, she occasionally implied the incident had occurred recently.

When George H.W. Bush first ran for president in 1980, the gray-haired, matronly Barbara Bush was “absolutely devastated” when Jane Pauley asked on Today if she minded that “people say your husband is a man of the eighties and you are a woman of the forties.” This “ugly” question made Mrs. Bush wonder, she recalled in her memoir: “Why didn't she just slap me in the face?” Barbara eventually learned to laugh off such comments. Her image as a cozy grandmother obscured the barbs that occasionally revealed a more prickly, less settled woman – and offered media outlets a ready-made rebuke of Nancy Reagan. “GOODBYE FIRST FASHION-PLATE -- HELLO FIRST GRANDMOTHER!” the New York Post proclaimed, when welcoming George Bush’s election.

Bush knew Americans wanted to see her assume the traditional “Bess” role. “I do not speak out on issues because I am not the elected official. When I am an elected official,” she chuckled, “I will speak out and I hope George Bush will do for me what I have done for him.” She would not “lobby George Bush” or his subordinates, she said.

Still, the Bushes could not resist creating a co-presidency – of sorts. Modern American politics drafts the presidential spouse in the full-time job of burnishing the presidential image. George H.W. Bush needed his wife to help embody his values and provide symbolic cover when his policies, or the nation’s pocketbook, would not suffice—and she delivered, most dramatically during the 1992 re-election campaign as “KEEP BARBARA IN THE WHITE HOUSE” bumper stickers proliferated.

Ironically, benefiting from American ambivalence regarding power, the Bushes’ reluctance to govern together as a couple, and “Bar’s” reticence, enhanced the first lady’s popularity and power. While Mrs. Bush did not dictate policy, she reserved the right to step in if necessary. “I have never interfered in George’s office,” she said. “But I mean, I would be a dummy if I wasn’t concerned about his well-being. If I think something is wrong, I tell him privately upstairs….”

Justifying any moves she made, she said: “Show me a wife who doesn’t” offer advice, “and I’ll show you one who doesn’t care very much.” George often said, “I’ll take that one up with Bar and see what she thinks.”Also, her monogram was on at least one Cabinet appointment. The secretary of Health and Human Services, Louis Sullivan, was an old friend. She admitted she offered advice and was “for” Sullivan, but knew her place.

Advisers toasted her as the house liberal. They credited Barbara for softening George’s positions on such “women’s issues” as “AIDS, the homeless, civil rights and education,” according to Sheila Tate, who worked on the transition, “Every time he says ‘Head Start’ that’s Bar.”

As Mrs. Reagan had done, Mrs. Bush was expected to reduce the Democrats’ traditional advantage among women without turning feminist. She supported women’s rights—but generically, cautiously.

Her strategy shows her political astuteness. All first ladies adopt a project; Jackie Kennedy beautified the White House, Lady Bird Johnson championed the environment, Betty Ford taught about breast cancer, Nancy Reagan demanded Americans “Just Say No” to drugs. Bush campaigned for literacy, publishing her dog’s best-selling White House memoir, Millie’s Book, to make reading fun and donate all the proceeds to literacy groups. Bush’s crusade had credibility because she had been identified with literacy for decades.

Still, her carefully calibrated approach had its critics. When Wellesley College designated her its 1990 commencement speaker, 150 of the graduating 600 seniors objected. Their petition said “honoring” the matronly college dropout from Smith, “who has gained recognition through the achievements of her husband… contravenes what we have been taught.”

Barbara Bush won the day by being herself. “You need not, probably cannot, live a ‘paint by number’ life,” Bush said in her address. She urged the graduates to “believe in something larger than yourself”; live lives filled with “joy”; and “cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.” That address may have been Bush’s finest moment as first lady. Some protesters even thanked her for taking them seriously. Time said Barbara Bush showed “there is honor and a deep, sustaining pleasure in motherhood, that a life-style is no substitute for a life.”

There is probably no better measure of her strategy’s success than the late first lady’s poll ratings, which dwarf her husband’s—she left the White House with an astounding 86 percent approval rating. She defined a modern presidential spouse’s dos and don’ts, practically, politically, not ideologically. She showed how to be substantive, contribute symbolically to the presidency and boost the president’s popularity while respecting the traditional boundaries. Since her tenure, two quite popular first ladies, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, have followed the Barbara Bush model—earning respect as thoughtful, caring, engaged presidential spouses without triggering the sexist fears of a power-hungry wife Hillary Clinton or Nancy Reagan did. That’s particularly impressive in the hostile environment in which all presidential couples operate. And unlike Melania Trump, Barbara Bush was a true presidential partner—giving a sense of being there without being overbearing.

Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency and operatic personal life clearly complicates Melania’s position. The more her husband’s personal scandals mount, the greater the pressure on her to be by his side but not under his thumb will grow. Reporters will naturally grumble about the East Wing “ghost town” and wonder, as a recent Newsweek headline did “What is Melania Trump doing?”

Mrs. Trump should replicate Barbara Bush’s Zen balance: Read the political and social subtleties beyond the headlines and serve your spouse, no matter how frustrated you might be, by taking the political version of the Hippocratic oath, staying away from controversy, resisting power grabs and first, making sure to do no harm.

Gil Troy is an American presidential historian, professor at McGill University, and visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution. His new book is The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s (Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin’s Press).